RIP: Adam Yauch of The Beastie Boys

Adam Yauch, one-third of the pioneering hip-hop group the Beastie Boys, has died at the age of 48, Rolling Stone has learned. Yauch, also known as MCA, had been in treatment for cancer since 2009. The rapper was diagnosed in 2009 after discovering a tumor in his salivary gland.

Yauch sat out the Beastie Boys’ induction to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in April, and his treatments delayed the release of the group’s most recent album, Hot Sauce Committee, Pt. 2. The Beastie Boys had not performed live since the summer of 2009, and Yauch’s illness prevented the group from appearing in music videos for Hot Sauce Committee, Pt. 2.

Yauch co-founded the Beastie Boys with Mike “Mike D” Diamond and Adam “Ad-Rock” Horowitz in 1979. The band started off as a hardcore punk group, but soon began experimenting with hip-hop. The band broke big with their first proper album, Licensed to Ill, in 1986, and further albums Paul’s Boutique, Check Your Head and Ill Communication cemented the band as a true superstar act.

In addition to his career with the Beastie Boys, Yauch was heavily involved in the movement to free Tibet and co-organized the Tibetan Freedom Concerts of the late Nineties. In 2002, he launched the film production company Oscilloscope Laboratories.

You know those annoying TMT news stories in which the writer takes that obnoxious, hyperbolic tack of contrasting the fact that such-and-such artist is doing so many amazing projects right now with the other fact that you, the reader, are a loser and aren’t really amounting to much of anything by comparison??? Well, basically, they’re all Oren Ambarchi’s fault.

Like, seriously, this dude is everywhere at once. We literally just reported about his recent collab with Keiji Haino and Stephen O’Malley for an Editions Mego imprint yesterday. And now we find out that he’s releasing a CD/2xLP record with Mats Gustafsson, Johan Berthling, and Andreas Werliin of Fire! on the Rune Grammofon label? And I’m supposed to notget into the fact that the rest of us are fucking wastes of space by comparison? Come on. Listen to this shit: there are two separate double vinyl editions, one on regular black and one very limited white edition (only available from the label site) that they’re only pressing 100 copies of! Also, both double vinyl editions have a 23-minute track not on the CD, and the CD edition has an eight-minute track not on the LPs. This is all just too rad to not get angry about.

And listen to this shit from the label’s website: “As with Jim O’Rourke on the previous album this is not a mere guest appearance. Ambarchi is fully intergrated as a member making this a glorious monster of a record. With their heavy, hypnotic, psychedelic rock’n’jazz explorations they have carved out a monumental and different sound than any of the projects they are normally associated with.” Monumental? Different?? See, all I’ve really done today is slurp coffee, shuffle papers around to different areas of my desk, and sneak into Mr P’s office to eat his slice of antique cake from Louis XIV’s wedding! Oh, wait, and that last one didn’t even really happen to me! It’s just a fucking Seinfeld episode that I’m remembering as my own life. Well, this is just ducky.

There’s a tendency among some to measure a man by his beard. When you apply that standard to musicians, idolization typically centers (or has centered, on the possibility that they have since trimmed or shaved) around two individuals — Sam Beam of Iron & Wine, and Will Oldham a.k.a. Bonnie ‘Prince’ Billy. It’s probably not a coincidence that they both specialize in unadulterated folk either; beards capable of storing inanimate objects unfortunately aren’t a trademark of most genres. They certainly aren’t a trademark of electronic music.

But then again, neither are New Jerseyans, really. As an experimental/improvisational electronic musician, Keith Fullerton Whitman inspires some minor head-scratching with the fact that not only did he grow up in New Jersey, but he also, apparently, has an absurdly long beard. Actually, if you Google Image search it, it looks like he, at some point, decided to de-emphasize his mustache. So he looks Amish as well. He’s an Amish New Jerseyan with tremendous facial hair, who makes electronic music for the Austria-based label Editions Mego, and in the past, for Kranky and Planet Mu. I’ll give you a moment to let that sink in.

There. Now, here’s some more interesting and (this time) completely relevant information: on June 19, Whitman will be releasing Occlusions, a companion LP to Generators, which was released earlier this year. The album consists of two “freely improvised” tracks that were recorded live during two performances in France and The Netherlands in February. How were they recorded, you might ask? Through “the absolute cheapest means available to the consumer to do so” — a Zoom H1 Handy Portable Digital Recorder, which you can purchase on Amazon for 95 bucks. I’ve never used it, so I can’t vouch for its quality, but apparently the recordings “sound fantastic.” I admit to being curious now, even if the recordings end up sounding horrible. Check out the album’s official page here.

Lloyd Brevett, founding bassist of legendary ska outfit the Skatalites, passed away earlier this morning (May 3) at Andrews Memorial Hospital in St. Andrew, Jamaica at the age of 80. Billboard reports that the musician had been in the hospital receiving treatment following a stroke and a series of seizures.

A recent report from the Jamaica Observer newspaper found close friend and former Columbia Records A&R person Maxine Stowe explaining that Brevett’s health had deteriorated considerably in recent months following the fatal February 26 shooting of his son Okeene near Brevett’s home in the Seaview Gardens area of St. Andrew. Okeene was returning home after accepting an award on his father’s behalf from the Jamaican recording Industry Association.

Brevett helped found the original lineup of the Skatalites in 1963, and the ten-person roster stayed together for 18 months. While they acted as a backup band on several pioneering ska recordings, the group also recorded a number of notable instrumentals on their own, including “Guns of Navarone” and “Eastern Standard Time.”

Beyond his tenure as the group’s upright bassist, Brevett also produced two Skatalites albums, 1975’s African Roots and 1976’s The Legendary Skatalites. The musician was honoured several times throughout his career, having been bestowed Jamaica’s Order of Distinction in October 2001 and the Silver Musgrave Medal for his contribution to music in October 2010.

If I had to pick the one guy who likes to collaborate the most, I’d have to pick Keiji Haino. A quick glance at the portion of his discography listed with his name plus at least one other artist includes outings with: Peter Brotzmann, Loren Connors, Shoji Hano, Tatsuya Yoshida, Barre Phillips, Derek Bailey, Boris, Alan Licht, KK Null, Coil, Thurston Moore, My Cat Is an Alien, Tony Conrad, Pan Sonic, and most recently, Jim O’Rourke and Oren Ambarchi, among quite a few others. And that’s to say nothing of Haino’s solo albums and works with his various bands (Fushitsusha, Purple Trap, to name but two). The man is serious about releasing a lot of music, so it’s no surprise that another collaborative effort is on the horizon.

Following two albums featuring the Haino / Ambarchi / O’Rourke lineup (Tima Formosa; TMT Review, and Imikuzishi; TMT Review), The Wire is reporting that Haino and Ambarchi have swapped out Japanese homebody Jim O’Rourke with another O’musician: drone bassist Stephen O’Malley (of sunn 0)))). O’Malley will take on bass duties (duh), while Haino will wail on guitar, play synth, and “sing,” leaving Ambarchi to play the battery (with the definition of this as a music instrument yet to be determined).

The record will be titled Nazoranai and will be released on O’Malley’s micro-Mego label, Ideologic Organ on July 3. Haino likes to keep song titles simple, and the tracks on this release are no different. The album will be issued as regular old CD and, for twice the fun, as a double LP (which will contain the same amount of music… [sad trombone noise]).

Nazoranai tracklisting:

01. feel the ultimate joy towards the resolve of pillar being shattered within you again and again and again
02. not a joy to come closer but so-called a sacred insanity has finally appeared
03. getting a bit blurry, brush up your cartel and devote it to something
04. not to leave everything to the light outside of you but to be aware of the prayer “what do i want to do?” that exists inside of you, and let that go out of you as a light, or things might get worse, no?